Desperate, but it was a chance.
“I got nothing to do today,” said Terl. “Your machine training has ended. We might run up to the town. Look at that relief map. Do a little hunting. Maybe look some more for your horse.”
A rambling Terl was not within Jonnie's experience. Did the monster know something? “I want to show you something, anyways,” said Terl. “So get your things together and I’ll be by in about an hour and we'll take a ride. I’ve got to check some things. I’ll be back. Be ready, animal.”
Jonnie scrambled. This was a bit premature and it upset his planning, but he looked on it as a heaven-sent chance. He had to get away and get to his people, both to stop Chrissie, if she attempted to keep her promise, and to move the village to a safer place. There were only two weeks left before the constellation returned to it’s place.
He put the small gun in his belt pouch, put the metal cutter alongside his ankle, packed a supply of smoked beef. He dressed in buckskin.
When the hour was up, a vehicle rumbled into sight and stopped. Jonnie stared at it, wondering what was going on. This was not the Mark III tank. It was a simple equipment truck normally used for transporting machinery. It had an enclosed, pressurized cab. The back was large and open, surrounded by stakes. It s only similarity to a tank was that it had no wheels but skimmed a varying distance up to three feet above ground.
Then Jonnie realized that this might work to his advantage. It had no heat-seekers, no guns.
Terl got out and opened the cage.
“Throw your things into the back, animal. And ride in the back.” He unfastened the leash and boosted Jonnie over the tailgate. He took out a pocket welder and fastened the leash to the cab.
“This way,” said Terl, “I won't have to smell those hides!” He was laughing when he got into the cab, took off his mask, and turned on its system. Suddenly Jonnie realized he had no way of immobilizing Terl– he couldn't open the door on him.
The truck skimmed away. It was slower than the tanks and it was not as well cushioned against the ground, for it was now running very underloaded.
Jonnie held on, his head ducked below the forward cab level. The eighty-mile-an-hour wind of passage roared over his head and against the truck's upright stakes.
He was thinking fast. Somehow he could play this so as to get the truck as well. It s controls weren't any different, of that he was certain from the quick glance he had had. All Psychlo controls were simple levers and buttons.
What a relief it would be to get rid of this collar. His heart was thudding expectantly. Once again, if he made no mistakes, he would be free!
Chapter 6
It was no more than 1:00 when they thudded to a halt outside the library in the town. Terl got out, shaking the vehicle with his weight.
He was still conversational when he unfastened the leash. “See anything of your horse?”
“Not a thing,” said Jonnie.
“Too bad, animal. This truck is the very thing to carry a horse, or ten horses for that matter.”
Terl went to the library door and with a tool undid the lock. He gave the leash a yank and sent Jonnie in ahead of him.
The place was a quiet tomb of dust, the interior the same as Jonnie had last seen it. Terl was looking around.
“Ha!” said Terl. “So that's how you got in before!” He was pointing to the disturbed dust under a window and the unchanged impressions of footprints across the floor. “You even put the guard screens back! Well,” he added, looking around, “let's find data on the western mountains.”
Jonnie was aware of the changes in himself. Those blotches of white he had seen before were signs, very plain and easy to read. He saw that his previous visit had occurred beside the “Children's Section” and that the shelves he had first approached were marked “Child Educational.”
“Wait a minute,” said Terl. “I don't think you know how to read a library index. Come over here, animal.” He yanked on the leash he had let run long. He was standing by stacks of small drawers. He bent over and opened one. “According to the Chinkos, every book has a card and the cards are in here in these drawers.
Alphabetical. Got it?”
Jonnie looked at the drawers. Terl had pulled one out that was all "Q." The cards were musty and grayed but readable. “Anything there about mountains?” said Terl.
Tense as he was, Jonnie had to repress a smile. Here was more proof that Terl couldn't read English. “The drawer you have there is about vehicles,” said Jonnie.
“Yes, I can see that,” said Terl. “Go through it and find 'mountains.' " He moved off, elaborately interested in some ancient posters on the wall, holding the leash.
Jonnie started opening drawers. Some were stuck; others had their front tabs missing. But he finally found the drawers for "M." He began to go through the cards. He came to “Modern Military Science.”
"I’ve found something,” said Jonnie. “May I have a pen to write the numbers?”
Terl handed him a pen several sizes too big for Jonnie's hand and then gave him some folded sheets. Terl wandered off again. Jonnie wrote down the numbers of several books.
“I have to go over to the shelves now,” said Jonnie. And Terl paid out more line.
After a little while, and after a minor battle with a ladder that had sunk into and stuck to the floor, Jonnie got up to a higher shelf and raised the protective sheet. In a moment he was swiftly scanning through a section of a book headed Defense Systems of the United States.
“Anything about mountains?” said
Terl. Jonnie bent down and showed him a page entitled "MXI Anti-Nuclear
Silos.”
“Yep,” said Terl.
Jonnie handed him the book. “We better take this one. There's some more.”
In rapid order he fought the ladder along the shelves and took out another half-dozen books: Nuclear Physics, Congressional Hearings on Missile Installations, The Scandals of Nuclear Mismanagement, Nuclear Deterrent Strategy, Uranium – Hope or Hell, and Nuclear Waste and Pollution. There were more but he felt rushed, and the seven books were heavy for a man about to run.
“I don't see any pictures,” said Terl.
Jonnie quickly pushed the ladder along. He grabbed a book, Colorado,
Scenic Wonderland, glanced at it, and gave it to Terl.
“That's more like it, animal.” Terl was pleased with the gorgeous views of mountains, particularly since many were purple and the aging ink had turned bluish. “More like it.”
Terl put the books in a sack. “Let's see if we can locate the relief map.” He gave the leash a yank that almost tumbled Jonnie off the ladder. But
Terl didn't lead the way to another floor right then. He wandered over to the door first and seemed to be listening. Then he came back and went up some stairs.
There was a relief map laid out on display, possibly not a permanent fixture. Terl knelt down and looked at it searchingly.
Jonnie, keyed up as he was, was made very uneasy by the colored relief map. It showed the nearby mountains very accurately by his estimation. The passes and Highpeak were plain. And there was the meadow of the village in plain sight. Of course the map had been made ages before there was a village. But still, there it was. It made Jonnie nervous. He knew the recon drone must have spotted it long since and that Terl undoubtedly had pictures of it.
There, also, was the long canyon, and
Jonnie knew he was looking at the location of what he had taken to be an ancient tomb. He looked as closely as he could without calling it to Terl's attention. No, there was no tomb or anything else marked at the head of that canyon. As a slight diversion, he traced out with his finger some of the letters: ROCKY MOUNTAINS, PIKE'S PEAK, MOUNT VAIL.